The reader will judge of the degree of credit which may belong to these narrations when he examines the effects of a similar kind which have taken place in less fabulous ages, and nearer our own times. John Henry Cohausen informs us that a Polish gentleman in the time of the Queen Bona Sforza, having drunk two dishes of a liquor called brandy-wine, vomited flames, and was burned by them, and Thomas Bartholin[35] thus describes a similar accident: “A poor woman at Paris used to drink spirit of wine plentifully for the space of three years, so as to take nothing else. Her body contracted such a combustible disposition, that one night, when she lay down on a straw couch, she was all burned to ashes except her skull and the extremities of her fingers.” John Christ. Sturmius informs us, in the German Ephemerides, that in the northern countries of Europe flames often evaporate from the stomachs of those who are addicted to the drinking of strong liquors; and he adds, “that seventeen years before, three noblemen of Courland drank by emulation strong liquors, and two of them died scorched and suffocated by a flame which issued from their stomachs.” [35] Acta Medica et Philosophica Hafniensia, 1673. One of the most remarkable cases of spontaneous combustion is that of the Countess Cornelia Zangari and Bandi of Cesena, which has been minutely described by the Reverend Joseph Bianchini, a prebend in the city of Verona. This lady, who is in the sixty-second year of her age, retired to bed in her usual health. Here she spent above three hours in familiar conversation with her maid, and in saying her prayers; and having at last fallen asleep, the door of her chamber was shut. As her maid was not summoned at the usual hour, she went into the bed-room to wake her mistress; but receiving no answer, she opened the window, and saw her corpse on the floor in the most dreadful condition. At the distance of four feet from the bed there was a heap of ashes. Her legs, with the stockings on, remained untouched, and the head, half burned, lay between them. Nearly all the rest of the body was reduced to ashes. The air in the room was charged with floating soot. A small oil lamp on the floor was covered with ashes, but had no oil in it; and in two candlesticks, which stood upright upon a table, the cotton wick of both the candles was left, and the tallow of both had disappeared. The bed was not injured, and the blankets and sheets were raised on one side, as if a person had risen up from it. From an examination of all the circumstances of this case, it has been generally supposed that an internal combustion had taken place; that the lady had risen from her bed to cool herself, and that, in her way to open the window, the combustion had overpowered her, and consumed her body by a process in which no flame was produced which could set fire to the furniture or the floor. The Marquis Scipio Maffei was informed by an Italian